Apple’s HomeView has an app problem | The Vergecast

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of CarPlay entitlements, which are a thing I know about against my will. I'm your friend David Pierce. Neil is here. Hello, sir. >> I know so much about CarPlay entitlements. >> I am so excited to talk more. I I am I am forcing more home view talk into the top of this episode because CarPlay is about to become more important in your life. And I think that is so funny. >> That's the worst. By the way, can I just shout out Gen 2 is amazing. Uh, it was so much fun to have her on the live stream afterwards. And we saw comments that were like, "You should let Jen talk more and she's British and polite and you just run over her." I just like talking to Jen a lot. >> Yeah, >> that's it. That's what I've got. Like it it is fun to talk to our reporters who are deep nerds on stuff and approximately one person in this world wants to talk to me about Z-Wave and it's Jen. That's it. That's >> I can confirm that. >> I I just want you to know I I just get excited to have another nerd who cares about my nerd stuff here. Jen does not care about CarPlay. The only other person who cares about CarPlay as much as me is Joanna Stern, >> whose home view videos were like, "Carlyplay." And then she like excitedly texted me about it. >> Yeah. >> So, I'm I'm working on it. We're going to bring it all together. And then we'll we'll make a show that like four people enjoy, but I will have the most >> and all four of them are the hosts of the show. It's a show for no one except the hosts. >> It's going to be great. I'm excited about it. We have a lot of stuff to get to today. We have a bunch of AI news. Um, we're going to talk about this thing where people are starting to slink back to X, which I find fascinating. Uh, we've got some SpaceX stuff going on. We've got a lot of We got a lot of news to get to, but I do want to start with a little bit of home view stuff at the top here. U, we did the live stream on Wednesday about Apple's new smart home entrant play here. But, um, one thing we we talked a little bit about and were a little bit confused by and got some feedback about was the app situation on the home view. Um, and I would say both that we've had some time to learn about it and read about it and talk to people about it, but also that I feel incredibly vindicated because it is really confusing and essentially makes no sense. So, Neil, do you just want to as best you can sort of lay out the app situation on the home view as we understand it now? >> There is no app situation on the home view. >> Well, it's not exact. It's mostly true. >> It's it's so true. The app situation on the home view is approximately the same app situation if you went on to Amazon or Alibaba and bought a $299 CarPlay tablet for your car. >> Yeah, that's basically right. Yeah, >> they sell those. You can just get one. >> Oh, yeah. They're in the Tik Tok shop all the time. >> Yeah, you can just get one. You just like mount it to your car. They sell some that are so big you just mount them over your vents. >> I've I've always been taken with these. >> Yeah. Uh, one day we'll do an entire episode on just people who own uh, older model Ford F-150s ripping out the entire dash and putting in CarPlay tablets. There's a whole ecosystem there that I'm passing by. >> That's basically what Apple did here. They they made the home view. They built some firstparty software to do some things. >> Yeah. >> In particular, make FaceTime calls and the home app. >> Yeah. It's not totally dissimilar from what you get kind of out of the box with the iPhone, right? It's like you get you get alarms, you get Apple calendar, you get the home app, you get messages, you get podcasts. It's it's sort of the the like bog standard set of Apple apps are on this thing, >> right? But there's no app store. And then there's a bunch of Apple apps that aren't there, >> right? Like if you are an Apple Music classical person, which has its own app because classical music is organized in complicated different ways, that is not available to you. Apple News, >> a thing you might wish to scroll on your displays. the the chaos of your family makes French toast around you. Not available here. All of these things are going to be CarPlay apps. And if you will recall on the day of the home view launch, it seemed like what Apple was going to do was take CarPlay and then like rework it for the home view. >> Mhm. >> And instead, it seems like they're just going to force everybody as a CarPlay app into supporting the home view. >> Yeah. There's a thing in the developer terms that essentially says if you make a CarPlay app, it will work on the home view. The end. There's like you you you barely even have the ability to turn it off. Like if it if it is in CarPlay, it will be on the home view. Does this approach make any sense to you? Cuz I confess this does not make any sense to me. >> Uh no, it it first of all, Apple's entire deal is apps. Yeah. >> And they're already asking a lot of developers. >> The iPhone Duo is going to require a lot of developers to support yet another screen size. There there's some amount of rumor in the rumor mill about a touchscreen Mac. Developers are going to have to think about that in some new way. >> I mean, this is a new hardware category for Apple. It is a new way of thinking about how you might interact with Apple devices in your home. And of all of the things you would ask developers to do, hey, think about like a true cool fun multi-user app for our shared screen in the kitchen. Seems like top of the list, right? This is a new category >> and instead Apple has chained it to the iPhone in a way that means I mean they've sold a lot of iPhones but they've chained it into the iPhone in a way that means you can only ever sell some fraction of the number of iPhones that exist and so the app model is that and the user model is that and it's a lot of iPhones don't get me wrong I think most companies would be happy to sell a significant portion of a fraction of iPhones >> and I can't imagine somebody who isn't already in the iPhone world is even going to be really looking at this thing. But maybe that's kind of the point, right? Like this this thing is an accessory of an iPhone. It's it's an Apple Watch in a very real way in that it actually there is no reason whatsoever to buy it separately from owning an iPhone in a way that like you can own an iPad and an Android phone and live a life that makes sense. This doesn't this will make no sense if you are not an iPhone family. And if you recall, and I know you recall because you wrote the wired cover story on the first Apple Watch, which found mad at you, right? >> I do in fact recall, >> right? The Apple Watch started as like a remote control for your iPhone apps. >> Mhm. >> Like that was a lot of the app model for the Apple Watch is Yep. >> This is just a little screen, but the app is actually running on your on your phone. And over time, >> as the processor got more efficient and more powerful, they brought the apps to the watch. This is why I was basically screaming, "Where is the computer?" on the live stream this week. >> The watch became a computer and then it started running the applications and now the watch is a vastly more independent computer even though it's still connected to your iPhone in a lot of ways. >> The home view does not appear to be a computer, right? It is the the model of that first generation Apple Watch where it's a remote for your phone is right there. And then it's on top of that, it's very funny they picked CarPlay as the app model for those little remote control apps. CarPlay. The way to think about CarPlay is that it is just a second monitor for your iPhone, right? It is screen projection and you plug it in or you wirelessly connect, your iPhone detects a second monitor that's a CarPlay app and it shares a screen with custom interfaces for the apps that are running on the phone. This is fine in a car. It's also it's also not like like it isn't fine in a car. And this is the thing like CarPlay I I am the pro CarPlay person on this podcast by default. I don't think CarPlay is very good, right? Like this experience is not good. Like the simplest example for me is Spotify. You don't get anything remotely approaching the full Spotify experience in CarPlay, which makes some sense when you're driving and you should be tapping as little as possible. But if I'm going to have to do the stupid CarPlay search thing where it goes, "What do you want to listen to? Pause. Bing." And then you talk every single time I want to use the home view. That's awful. Like this is this is a thing that clearly has enough processing power. It has enough screen. It's going to be plugged in. So it's not like there's a power issue there. >> You're also not driving. You're not distracted, >> right? There is nothing preventing this thing from being a computer. Except that Apple doesn't allow it to be. And I guess part of it is the way that it's thinking about switching between users. And if you want to have a bunch of apps logged in to a bunch of different things, like I can see how that model locally would get confusing, but that model's confusing anyway. And if what you're telling me is that this thing is going to learn to seamlessly switch between CarPlay devices, have you ever tried to switch CarPlay devices, Nei? Like I I don't know. This just makes me more concerned than ever that this thing is actually going to work in a way. >> We obviously have to get it and review it. We will see. But here's my my big question for you is this is a lot of new hardware from Apple coming out, >> right? We're the Duo is soon to come out. This thing will come out. There there's the new Apple TV. Hot new hardware from Apple. Uh there are rumors today that there will be a touchcreen uh MacBook from from German >> potentially very soon. >> Potentially very soon. This is a lot of new hardware from Apple. It's a big push, right? New CEOs, hardware CEO, here's all the new hardware. And it feels to me like the question we're going to ask at every single turn is did you get the software right? >> Right. >> Did you make the right software decisions? And if I was going to be super rude, I would say none of this hardware is particularly like beyond the industry. >> The home view in particular, right, is like it's an LCD display on a previous generation chip. >> Sure. But like yes, you could have made this at any point in the past 100 years, Apple. >> Sure. >> I I will grant you the duo has a lot of like engineering in it, but foldables have been around for 5 years. So the the wins here are all going to be software wins, ecosystem wins, >> right? >> And I it's it's interesting that all of my questions about all these devices are around did we get the software right? Is the ecosystem paying off in the way we want it to or is actually holding us back? >> Yeah. >> And I I truly do not know the answer to that question. I don't either, but it's been interesting to see like the app developer community has raced to support the Duo. Apple Apple has gone out of its way to help people do this, but also >> even for a relatively new device that I suspect will not sell in giant numbers just because it's so expensive. App developers are all over this thing and the app store situation for the Duo on day one is going to look great there. This is what Apple is good at. This is Apple's main advantage over Android in particular. I've been using a lot of different size screen Android devices recently. I had the Alexa tablet. We have Google Books. And I am I am just struck over and over by the fact that Google is unwilling or unable or both to convince developers to support nonphone devices. Just can't do it. The keyboard stuff doesn't work very well. The large screen stuff doesn't work very well. Apple is good at this. and and for Apple to come out with something like the Home View that it ostensibly believes is going to be a big mainstream device. Like Apple gave developers a better story for the Vision Pro than they're giving the Home View. And it just I'm I'm just confused by this. And I think the long run it'll probably be like the Apple Watch like you just described, right? It starts as an accessory and slowly over time becomes a computer. But that was a new piece of hardware with tons of new ideas and really really intense constraints. Tiny thing, tiny battery, tiny processor, lots of new stuff going on. This should have none of those problems. Like if if ever there was an Apple gadget to just over horsepower into existence with an app store, it should be the one that is plugged in sitting on your kitchen table. I'm just confused. Like actually the one thing Apple is best at is putting enough processing power and RAM in its computers to make its experiences work. >> Yeah. >> Like I think there's two reasons people like CarPlay. And I'm like you. I'm like it's it's fine. It's there. I use it in in our cars, but I don't think it's the best thing ever made. But I think there's two reasons people really like it and are are very very very viciferous. They'll never buy a car without it. One is just the library of apps. And every time we do like a decoder CarPlay episode, we get all this email about it. And one always sticks out in my mind. It was a reader who's like, "I have a Bible app. The maker of the Bible app is never going to write an Android Automotive app and put it in the Play Store for your weird Android car." >> Yes. >> Right. There there's no way to get that app, that big library of app. This is like Instagram on the Windows phone. >> You can you can make all the Windows phone you want. You don't have Instagram, you're dead. There's some long tale of apps that CarPlay supports and that means you have that and every other alternative does not have the one app you want. Right. So, you're back to CarPlay. The second, and I I think this is just tremendously important, is that it is using your car's display as just a second monitor. And so, all of the logic, all the application is running on your phone, which has enough processor and enough RAM and a fast cell connection. And so, the computer is good. >> Yep. >> Like, that's it. And every car maker under specs the the processor and RAM and everything else in their car. So you you like can't compete with a new iPhone with any car. You just can't do it. Maybe Rivian and Tesla can do it, but I think everybody has the same questions about performance of those systems over time. >> Sure. >> Apple is like very they know that this is what they win on. This is why you have a $300 Apple TV. It has more horsepower than any TV app developer can possibly know what to do with except for the one or two game vendors who think they're going to make it happen on there, right? >> Yeah. >> What are you doing with all that power in the home view? >> You should just let people run their apps. >> Yeah. >> This all the way back around to should this just be an iPad? >> Yes. We got so much response that essentially amounted to, what if Apple had just made a really kick-ass MagSafe mount for the iPad that just worked. I'm like, yeah, that would have been the thing. Uh, just as for the Pixel tablet, you know what I mean? Like, Pixel tablet got everything right. Um, we also missed one detail that a couple of people pointed out that I think is a very big deal, which is that the new, uh, Apple TV remote, which is easier to find, um, is backwards compatible like a long way back in Apple TVs. So, screw the new Apple TV, just buy the new remote. >> I think that's what I did with the last Apple TV. >> They just got me on the remote upgrade cycle. >> Remotes and polishing cloth are are how Apple really >> I feel like I've upgraded my Apple TV remote more often than my iPad. That's That might be true. I agree with that. I feel a lot of Apple TV remotes now that I think about it. It's like those and left AirPods have are the other thing I upgrade all the time. Um all right, we should switch gears. We should talk about some AI news. Um the big news of this week was that Google released Gemini 4 uh Argon, which is its sort of re-entrance at the frontier of the model race. If you remember for the last what would you say three or four months the the scuttlebutt in the AI industry has been that Google fell behind that uh with with Fable and with Mythos and all of the stuff that OpenAI and Anthropic were doing that they were way out in front and they had essentially left Google behind. Um Google then shows up with Gemini 4 Argon which it says is just as good as those other models. It's also vastly cheaper and it has sort of announced itself back at the front of the race. Um, Robert Hart on our team also wrote a great piece this week pointing out that uh, Meta, which just released a model called Wonderful Full, which is I don't I don't like Meta. >> Well, it's Meta. It's Wonder. It's Muse Wonder. And then there's the big one, the full one, which is Muse Wonderful Full. >> Yeah, but they did wonderful. And I don't I don't like that. It's like I It's like I just don't like it. Everything about Meta and AI is a little too cute and oddly a little too sexy. >> Yeah, it's got like a little bit of an ass on it, you know. But anyway, um what what do you make of some of the news of this week? It does feel like there is this sort of renewed sense of real competition in this space for the first time in a minute. Even as all these companies are reckoning with questions about safety and trying to figure out their product stuff, like th this who is winning at models race does kind of feel like it's back on. Did you watch uh Zuckerberg and Alexander Wang on the Cheeky Pint podcast? I mean, everyone watch Zuckerberg drink the Guinness. >> I was gonna say we all saw the meme of him enjoying quote unquote enjoying a beer. I watched bits and pieces of the interview, but not a not a ton of it. Why? >> Uh I'm I'm fascinated by where where Meta is right now. So, I watched most of that interview. Uh as always, it's it's very fun to watch Zuckerberg talk about communication styles. So, I think they asked him about Wang's like tweets with the butts and Zuckerberg was like, "Well, you have to be authentic." And I was like, "Is that is that actually your thing?" Um, butts are who I am. >> Like, authenticity. All right, whatever. Um, anyway, there's a part of that where Zuck in particular was talking about the bet they made on training their own model. >> And Wang was like, "We need our own reasoning model." And at one point inside of Meta that was like frowned upon and he was like, "I think we're going to fail. I think we're making the wrong bet. And he convinced Zuck to do it. And he like, we're going to write a $200 billion check. We don't know if this is going to pay off. And Zuck was like, but we have to because we are a full stack technology company. We need to control the thing that powers our experiences. And so Meta just in, yeah, in like Zuckerberg fashion was like, we're just going to win. We're just going to do this until it's clear that we shouldn't anymore, right? Like, but this we need to have this technology in order to make Muse work. And the dynamic there that I think is utterly fascinating is they launched the consumer product that people are interested in without the more powerful model. >> Yeah. >> And then Right. And then now if you pay them money you'll get Muse wander and over time I think they'll figure it out. But Meta is a consumer products company. They're good at it. You can feel a lot of ways about Meta. But again I will come back to the Oculus Quest 2 was a great consumer product. They are good at defining a consumer product, marketing it, making it a good consumer experience, and then ruthlessly initifying it with Instagram ads, whatever it is. But they're good at it. Um, and I think it's very interesting that their priority was launching the product that was interesting that made investment in the model seem worthwhile. >> Right? So, they need a reasoning model because they want Muse to be more capable, but they need they were happy to be like, Muse is finished. we can give it to people with the capabilities it has today and then over time it will get more capabilities. The same way, I don't know, the iPhone come came out and then they were like OLED screens and then the iPhone changed and now they're like folding OLED screens and the iPhone changed, >> right? >> But the the product like made a promise and kept it. I think Google is releasing all these models left and right and they have no idea what their product should be, >> right? To the extent that OpenAI and Anthropic are have products in market, they've both figured out that they their products are enterprise products, right? They're they they are business software companies as you keep calling them and they're more powerful models. You know the I I love that everyone's demo case for all these models is like it can use Blender so well >> and it's like five people in the world need this capability. >> Yes. I'm sure they're very enthusiastic, but they haven't made the consumer products. And Meta is the one that has like truly figured out, okay, there's a flywheel here between our consumer product and our massive investment in the models and what that will enable the consumer product to do. And I it's great that there's a race on the frontier, but I I think that's fun and interesting. I it just man none of these companies apart from meta have like put it forward like here's a great even dots from openai is enterprise software I saw Casey talking about how much he loves dots the other day and he's like I run a business now and I do business stuff with my dots and I was like very few people are in that position >> sure and that's and that's well and good right the idea like the idea of these things being business software is is good and fine and is going to be very successful um I've been reading Kevin Roose's book the AGI Chronicle it It's it's really really good. Um, and there is a there's a point he makes very near the beginning that there are there were kind of two big ideas about AI that are also sort of two big ideas about AI products. And one is do you make narrow AI to solve narrow problems, right? Like do you do you build and train and refine a model to do English to French translation? You can do it very well, but it is very specific and very narrow. or do you do the big huge one model to rule them all approach which is much harder and requires vastly more compute but that these researchers found over and over would actually over time outperform the narrow models and he he ties this to Google as a company which looked at AI for a really long time as a way to make its existing products better and it's like okay we need we need this new way of doing translation to improve Google translate and we can do really great summarization oh that's going to be so useful for Gmail and they they looked at these things and they said, "We have a set of products. How can we how can we poke AI at them?" And you can still see that inside of Google. Even now, Gemini like is a product. Google is bad at understanding how to talk about Gemini as a product. And so, it it just exists kind of outside of itself. While most of its energy is focused on how do we put Gemini into your Gmail and into your Google Docs and how do we beat you over the head with it every time you use one of our products so that we can put AI in there. And in some ways that makes a lot of sense. You get you get a huge distribution victory. Google has all of these business clients. Uh Gemini 4 is much cheaper than some of the other ones which is a big deal that doesn't get talked about a lot. But like these frontier models are very expensive and Google is running a promotion where they're I think 80% cheaper than the comparative models. Like that's a big deal. But there there is no sense to me. I have no belief that Google is even capable of doing what Muse did, which is one entire new thought about how people are going to use AI. Yeah. Like it's it's so telling that Google tried to build this thing backwards out of Gmail rather than start with something wholly new. >> Oh no. I I think it's it is even worse than that. Google announced Gemini Spark at IO. >> Yeah. >> They they they announced the product. They had the other product the browser use product. I forgot what it was called that they canceled. >> Mariner. Yeah. >> Uh and they they that's what should be inside of Gmail. >> Sure. >> Like what what do these products What do Agentic products like truly need? They need access to your email. >> If if you were if you were to break it all down, like what is the number one thing they they need to be as effective as everyone wants them to be? They want your email. >> God, Muse is so thirsty about my Wait, can I just tell you this is a total diversion. Can I tell you my favorite new thing that's happening in Muse? Uh I play fantasy football. I'm in two leagues and every uh every Monday night I get a report on how the week went and then every Wednesday I get uh the like waiver report on who picked up and dropped players. So now five days a week maybe I get some kind of update from Muse with fantasy football advice. I never asked it to do this >> pure engagement page. >> It's incredible. It just reaches out and it's like hey here's who I think you should pick up off the waiver wire and I'm like I didn't you and I have never talked about football. >> Have you told it to stop doing that? >> No I haven't. I'm sort of enjoying it to be honest. >> Okay. Well so Meta is Meta is good at consumer products. They're good at engagement bait. They're good at making you come back and use the thing again. They're good at notifications. like they're good at this. >> Yeah. >> Really, really good at this. Uh my It's like every time talking about AI is so much like talking about a dream you had. Like the stakes are so low for everyone else and for you it's like I almost died. Like no, you didn't. You're fine. You're sitting right here talking about when you were asleep. Anyway, so uh mine is constantly digging again. I gave it my spam email, so it's always doing the same kind of engagement me >> and I told it to stop. I was like, I want you to stop proactively reading my email. I just want updates on the three things that we agreed on, which are mostly like, did I get a class action notice and did you fill it out? >> Uh, just make me the like cheapest money you can make. >> Uh, and it won't stop. And I was like, you have to stop. And I was like, I want you to pay me $200 every time you proactively read my email without my permission. >> That's right. >> Um, and it is still trying to figure it out. Like, it is just in the background somewhere at Meta. Some data center is just spinning cycles trying to figure out how to do this. It has not done more proactive email reading. Somebody's like, "How has this one user used 11 billion tokens?" But he hasn't prompted us in in >> It's still going. It's still every now and again like, "Do you figure out this scheme where you're going to stop proactively reading my email?" It's like, "I'm still figuring out how to make money." >> Let me know when you've done it. >> It's very good. >> Uh the Roose book is good. It is fun to read. All these people truly hate each other. Kevin had a book party in New York and I saw him speak at it. Uh and he said the book could have been titled That Guy. >> That's a really good book. cuz like they all truly hate each other. Um, >> and it is very true that Google in particular has the innovator's dilemma. >> All of its products are huge. They all throw off a lot of cash. They can't disrupt them too much. There isn't a business model for consumer AI yet. They haven't figured it out. And so they're they're trying to just increment all of those products. And they really should just put Gemini in Gmail and be like, be honest, read your email and send you some notifications about what to do. And I think they're they're terrified of doing that, right? Like I I Whereas the upside for Meta, if they get it right, is is skyhigh. >> Yeah. >> So, we'll see. But I that to me is I'm just looking at Yes. It's great that the frontier models are are pushing out there. It's great that like CNBC in the morning now, like the very straight laced morning anchors on CNBC are like RSI is coming and then we'll all be dead. >> Weird. It's weird that that has permeated the consciousness because of the capabilities, these models. The products are still not there. And it's >> I I think it is worth giving Meta some credit. >> They figured out a consumer product before anyone else did. And if you look at the home view, you're kind of like, well, I know what that thing should look like. >> Yeah. I have to assume that right now at Google there is either a furious effort to buy Instinct at almost any price >> or a furious effort to build that exact thing because Google has every single bit of necessary infrastructure to have built an AI bot that works in your messaging app and didn't do it and lost. And like at some point the the bidding war for that company is going to be outrageous and I suspect that it's happening as we speak. Um, two more quick things we should talk about before we get off the AI train. Um, one is, are you caught up on this weird story about the OpenAI employee like planting a bug in one of the conference rooms? >> I don't have anything to say about this story. I just think it's wild. >> I mean, it's a great story. Uh, the part that really got me was he tried to hide it with toilet paper, but tell the rest of the story. >> Okay, so the, as I understand it, basically um, OpenAI discovered that an employee had planted a bug in one of their conference rooms. uh ostensibly to record and take trade secrets. This is one of the like important conference rooms that not even everybody has access to. Um they they planted it behind the TV in the USB port. Uh which I think is just a really funny way of just totally dooming the idea of USB ports on television. Like >> you got to get power from somewhere. >> It's a really good place to hide a recording device. I'm just saying like I'm not condoning it, but if you're going to put it in a room, that's probably the place to put it. Um, so anyway, this person has been arrested. There's been a bunch of information that has come out about, you know, they they booked a one-way plane ticket out of the country. Lots of this story left to tell, I think. But, uh, this is also like OpenAI is embroiled in a a lawsuit with Apple over the allegation that they're stealing trade secrets from Apple. That is like an an official part of their interviewing process. like the the secretiveness and the value of those secrets in this industry I think is just starting to create a huge mass of these stories. >> Okay, so first of all, the opening guy, he used his wife's chat GPT account to to find ways to hide a recording device. This is the best fact in this entire story. >> I didn't know that. The FBI found that his it was his wife's account which was obviously tied to him at some point. >> They'll never catch me. >> And he was like, "What are the best ways to hide a tracking mark?" Like incredible facts in this story. >> And then he had booked a flight to Saudi Arabia after he planted the device. So he he was trying to a one-way ticket with the family back to Saudi Arabia. >> Um just very very good. And then I mentioned the toilet paper. They they found a like a thumb drive size recording device and he had for some reason wrapped it in toilet paper and stuck it into the TV. >> Yeah. You listen, you're you're the TV guy. Can you explain this one to me? >> I >> It feels worse. I feel like if if I walk in and I see a thing in the TV, I assume it's there. If I see a thing in the TV wrapped in toilet paper, I now I have questions. I do feel like there's an element of this where he used his wife's chat account and it hallucinated ideas about how to hide a thumb drive and it was like no one will ever notice if you wrap it in toilet paper when what he should have done is gotten a label maker and printed out like E3 and plug you know what I mean >> that's good >> right like some other thing like he should have printed like you know the eyelock dongle >> or just write the name of the conference room on it and then plug it in and everybody will just assume it's supposed to be there. >> Yeah, exactly. like you just like whatever the conference room like ours at Vox Media were always named after cities which was very confusing. >> So you would just print like Chicago on it and just like plug it in there. It's like fine. >> It's like look it must it must belong here. >> But the number of times at our company when people would be like I'm in New York City and be like yeah I know like not new information guys but yeah that's a good story. We we'll track that that one as it comes. Um, the one other one really quick is, um, Character AI, which is a company we haven't talked about a ton on this show, um, but was one of the early what if the AI bot was your best friend/sexual partner kinds of companies. Um, filed bankruptcy. It turns out in that process was under investigations stemming from a a kid who committed suicide not that long after talking with its bot on Character AI. this this investigation found or was in the middle of finding some pretty alarming stuff. Um but now in a really interesting way there are lots of questions uh including one of the questions we asked on on the site which is what happens to all of this data now right like the what happens in a in a bankruptcy proceeding is it is basically shipped for parts and sold and presumably one of the parts is going to be vast quantities of user data including about children. Um, this is kind of the first one of these that has gone through this at at this sort of scale. Uh, it we also I think 404 media had a really good story about the uh finances that go into this and just the unbelievable amounts of money that are being burned in all of these companies. But this is like this is a tiny case study of what I suspect is going to be a lot of companies that burn through a lot of cash and have a lot of user data and are going to just go belly up out of nowhere >> and and and what happens after that I don't know that anybody knows yet. >> Well, Character I was was kind of doomed in the middle of its story, right? It was started by Noam Shazir who was one of the early LM engineers at Google. He was like very frustrated that Google wouldn't do a chatbot. So then he left to do Character AI because he thought everyone was going to fall in love with LMS. And then Google did a reverse aquire, right? And they brought him back. >> And so like Character AI is like dead man walking because Google just like hired the team out from under it. >> Fair. Yeah. >> And so like it was always like what are you going to do with this? I think the 404 docs, the bankruptcy docs that they reported on, they were making like a million dollars in revenue. Like it was like nothing. >> Yeah. >> Against all of the spend that they had taken to start the company. So at some point they should have been actively trying to manage what happens to this user data because it was it was just abundantly clear when that when Google did the aqua hireer this company was going to die. >> Yeah. >> There's no like when I'm talking about there's no consumer products like your kids can illegally bang a chatbot is not a consumer product. No, >> but these companies are also in a position of they're running so fast and they're burning so much cash and like every day is an existential crisis in so many ways that uh this will not be the last company that didn't think hard enough about stewarding of that stuff. >> Uh and I think a good question is how valuable is this user data? So the other thing that was on my mind is like Spirit Airlines went out of business and there was a auction for their corporate data, >> right? Because if you have a bunch of data about ticket booking and flight schedules and itinerary and over booking and feed and just like the operations of an airline, that's really valuable if you're trying to train a model that can do other enterprise tasks. You have a bunch of user data that's like do you love me? Like we already they already they already stole all of Tumblr. Like they don't need more of it, >> you know? Oh, so like I I think we're going to find that there's like markets for different kinds of data as more and more of these companies go under and we see what happens to more and more of them. But >> yeah, I mean there should there be a federal privacy law that protects user data when companies like this go out of business? It probably should. >> Yeah, agreed. Um all right, that's enough AI talk for one day. Uh let's get on to something less controversial, which is the state of social media and X. Uh but first, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Jira by Atlassian. AI is only as useful as the context it has to work from. But when that context is scattered across tools, threads, and DMs, that means your team and your AI agents end up flying blind. That's the problem Jira solves. What's the goal tied to your project? What got decided last week in Slack DMs? Atlassian's teamwork graph pulls all the pieces together from Jira, Confluence, GitHub, Slack, and more so nothing falls through the cracks. With Jira, you can actually share the context with agents you already use like Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot. Assign them work directly or connect your agents through MCP. Spend less time digging through endless links and DMs, less time chasing down what got decided and by who, and more time actually shipping with Jira. Learn more at jira.com. That's jir.com. Support for the show comes from bit warden. 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This cyber security awareness month, check out Bitwarden. Visit bitwarden.com to get started. Support for Vergecast comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Here's something that might surprise you. Every 6 seconds, a pet owner in the US gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000. Be prepared with Fetch Pet Insurance. Fetch is the most complete coverage for dogs and cats. According to consumeradvocate.org, Fetch covers accidents, illnesses, diagnostics, and more. Every vet in the US and Canada is a network. You can build a plan that fits your budget and once approved, claims are paid back in as little as two days. To learn more, go to fetchpet.com/save. That's fetchpet.com/save. All right, we're back. Um, Neil, are you an ex? I actually I realize I don't know the answer to this question. Um, I check it every day now. Um, there's a lot of AI conversation there and I think it is important to see primary sources. Every now and again I will snarkily reply to someone who is racist and remind them I'm from Wisconsin. >> That's the thing. That's the thing I do. >> I would say that's a reasonably representative use of X. So that's pretty good. So >> we're going to have this whole conversation. I just want everyone to know that is my experience of X. >> Yeah, that's that's fair. Um, I bring this up because over the last really couple of months now, there's been this slow sort of steady drip of people with some mix of fiery resolve and their tail between their legs going back to X. If you if you rewind like three years ago, maybe four years ago, kind of in the in the 12 months after Elon Musk bought Twitter and started to ruin it and turn it into X, uh, a lot of people performatively left the platform, announced they were leaving the platform, renounced their support for this place, and left. I left quietly. I, this was made, this choice was made easily for me because I left on parental leave in December of 2022, which happened to be a really great time to stop tweeting. and I just I never I never posted about it. I just never went back. Um but I think like the the the Verge has explained in public how we feel about X. But then recently, so I think um the first one that really came across my radar was Max stories um where where John and Federico, two, the folks at Max Stories decided that they were going to go back to X and start posting. Um that caused a a mini revolt. >> Not even a mini revolt, right? They lost a bunch of their staff. People got really mad at them. full scale revolt. People are very upset. And then just in the last week or so, uh, our friend Casey Newton, uh, on platformer wrote that he is now going to start posting on X again. Uh, and then our friend John Kruber wrote about basically that X is the thing again. Um, I don't know John's particular stance on posting on X, but he pointed out basically that X is still the best social network. Um, >> no wait, hold on. That's not that sure in of its kind. >> No, I well >> this compare in the universe of social networks in the category of things that look like Twitter. >> The total the title of his post is X once again marks the spot and he basically says Mastadon is a wasteland. Blue sky lost threads is like an empty space filled with people. >> But what are those things? Those are all things that look like Twitter. It's like you won the Academy Award for best sound design in a feature film about dinosaurs. Like yes in that in your category you might but best social network is a whole different thing. >> Sure. Sure. >> Radically different thing. >> Sure. Twitter between Twitter and the Twitter clones the there was a there was a everybody believed they were leaving for something else. >> Lots of people loudly talked about how they were leaving for something else. >> Again I'm one of those people >> and people are are are slinking back. >> Some people. >> How do you feel about this? Uh, I feel like Meta really blew it with threads. They have a legitimately bigger product with more people and they were so anti- news and anti-realtime feeds that they just lost. They they what Katie Napal calls it the gas leak social network. She's a great writer, Business Insider. Um, uh, it you go on there and it is just the weirdest algorithm with the weirdest engagement bait. People getting things wrong on purpose. look left and right. Um, old tweets from like a hundred years ago being rearmed for engagement. Everything that's wrong about Meta is is just in your face on threads. >> They have some of the most interesting product design ideas about what a Twitter like can and should do. >> Y >> I haven't done this yet, but if you're a podcaster, you can have your podcast card appear between all of your posts on threads. There's they have some like real time NBA chat stuff going on. Like their product ideas are good. that Meta is a good consumer product company. Their algorithm ideas are so weighted to engagement that it doesn't matter. >> Yes. >> And it it is by far bigger than X by far. >> We can we'll set Blue Sky and Macedon aside for many minutes. We can come back to them. Uh X has decided to win in one category and I think this is why everyone's confused and angry. They have decided to win an AI conversation and tangentially venture capital circle conversation. >> Sure. >> If you are a VC and you would like to talk about how smart you are in the company of other VCs, do I have a platform for you? If you are interested in AI and what it can do and being excited about the future of software development, boy, do I have the the platform for you. In almost every other case, X is irrelevant. And I you I was talking to Casey about it because you know he and I shared a revulsion to X at the beginning and his point which I think is valid and I will come to why I think it's valid is if you want to cover the AI industry you have to be in the rooms that they are in and X is that room by far and away that room. >> Okay. If you want to cover almost anything else, you might not have to be in that room, right? And so all the people that you are talking about are tech journalists who want to talk about AI and converse about AI and like knock their ideas around and then go go home and write about AI or make AI podcasts or whatever it is. >> Sure. >> And so all of the principles in the tech industry are on X. That's what they've chosen. And they've chosen it for good reasons, for bad reasons. Maybe John Turnis just doesn't want Elon Musk to yell at him. Maybe they all just hate Zuck more than they hate Elon, right? Like a mill Blue Sky is not big enough. Like, fair enough, man. They're they're they're making whatever choices they're making. And if you're a reporter, I think it's really important to go look at primary sources. >> Mhm. >> For better or worse, the primary sources of the conversation are on that platform. This is what I look at every day. I do not feel the need to participate in that conversation. I I I'm I'm not into giving our work away for free as people know, especially to people who don't value my literal existence. And there are a lot of people on X who do not value my existence. My my experience with X is uh racial slurs. That is just a thing that happens to me when I post an X >> because people hate Wisconsin. >> They hate W. I mean, there's like a podcast in XAR called like the Indian question. Like >> we're like 2% of the population. Like we're fine. >> Yeah. >> We're just all smarter and hotter than you. Okay. Um uh I'm sorry. Uh but like that that is real and I I have a lot of friends who don't see it. They're not experiencing that part of it. >> Sure. >> I think that that's happening here. But I do think if you are a tech journalist, you ought to go look at the primary sources. And if your experience on blue sky is kind of like mine, I like started to worry that I was just looking at screenshots of X like curated by other people. >> Yeah. By people who are mad. >> By people who are mad. And the reason I set those aside is I think those platforms should succeed. I think that there's some great value in federated social networks and open social networks. And maybe Blue Skyy's point is never to run Blue Sky. It's to enable a bunch of other things to operate. Maybe Maston's point is to never really be big. It's just to be the network of things that are on Activity Pub and one day figure out how to interact with threads, which is just like a holy war. That is all technology. Mhm. >> It is not the consumer experience of where are the important people talking and in this one field in tech they are all talking on X. I understand it. I have a lot of friends besides John and Casey and Veter and all those people who are like well I have to go look at it. But here's my counter example and I'm curious what you think about this. >> Um it is we are 20 days 19 days away from the midterm elections. X is irrelevant to the election. It is it is just not a factor in this election. They there was an entire right-wing conspiracy theory about James Terico. >> Yeah. >> Being in a mental institution >> in Ohio >> in in another world. >> Yeah. >> X would have just horsepowered this into existence. >> Right. We've all experienced this in various elections where the the wild fire of an ex political conspiracy theory be became the assignment editor for the entire media. Just didn't happen. just fizzled. The idea that our candidates are arguing on X or issuing policy positions on X or reacting to X is nowhere in this cycle. And that's the counterpoint. Okay. I I fear you just picked the worst example because the Tyler Rico thing did actually kind of escape containment and it did force the Times to do the piece where they went and like looked at his Ring camera records to make sure that he was home and like this one hit, but it's >> I totally disagree with you. it. I mean, it's there. I can show you the coverage. Like, the the idea that random people on Twitter get to assign the mainstream media what to do remains in existence. It's just there. It's not nearly as often, but it's still there. And I do I think one really, >> but not in a way that breaks through, right? Like uh in the in the last presidential election, they're eating the dogs or eating the cats. >> Sure. just concocted out of nothing on X until it landed in a debate and then is now like a rap song on >> I agree with that and I think the thing that is most bizarre about this moment that we're in is that that kind of doesn't happen anywhere like in a weird way even as so many other monocultures were breaking Twitter stayed kind of a monoculture >> so Casey's argument is that Twitter has gotten much smaller it's much less lucrative than it used to be for for you can see its financials as part of SpaceX is SpaceX is a public company now and it's also vastly smaller. >> Mhm. >> Like all and when you this is why I reacted so strongly to best social network. >> The best social network is like Instagram reels. >> Well, yeah. Yes. >> Right. Or Tik Tok. >> I I think there is a strong argument to be made that neither of those things even resemble social networks. But >> but that is where people are having social media experiences. >> That's where they're having entertainment experiences. But this is this is a semantics argument we don't need to have. I I I I take your point and I I think in a weird way what actually happened is that we didn't replace Twitter with anything. It all just sort of died. And I'm I'm at a point increasingly where like I I I use threads more than any of the other ones. Um I don't really know why. Just >> so weird. So, Blue Sky, Blue Sky is weird because everybody on Blue Sky is either like in violent agreement or violent disagreement in a way that I find exhausting in both directions. Um, but everybody's mad all the time. >> X I find just like deeply unpleasant. All the people on it, frankly, I find deeply I just don't have a good time on X and I don't feel any obligation to post there. So, whatever. Um, threads is like the sort of tamest middle ground for me and that's fine. It's a place to post. People can find it. But there isn't like I I think the idea that you have to go back to X because it is meaningful for most things is true. But the thing about the AI conversation that you're missing is that the AI conversation is the most important. It's the only conversation everybody is having. And that gives X a huge amount of power because >> No, no, they did it on purpose. They they they made this choice >> for sure, but it's and and for a long time that was politics, right? Like they gave they gave huge weight to political conversations and so they elevated it onto cable news and now it's just AI because of the people who run it. >> But the thing is they called that correctly. AI is the most important conversation everyone is having right now. It's the most important conversation political journalists are having right now, right? Like if if you can't it is like you're you're talking about the people on just off-handedly on CNBC talking about how RSI is going to kill us all. Like >> well that's their business journal was talking about money. >> That's what we do. I think we are at a point now where even that one conversation is the closest thing to a universal conversation being had and it does make X powerful and I think it's a huge bummer that everybody has allowed themselves to stay on X and do that. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that those the people on that platform like they're not there because X is powerful. They're there because their their politics have moved in large part the same way that Elon Musk did. The same way that Mark and Dre's did, the same way that like it no one is not there with open eyes is what I'm saying. Uh and and you either do it feeling bad about it or you do it because these are your people and you love it. But it is still powerful >> in that one way. And that way is very important. >> I I'll make this distinction. I don't think any normal person should be on X. I don't if you're >> I don't think any normal person should be on social media to be absolutely completely honest with you. Like and we'll go with textbased Twitter clone social media. There is no audience to build there. There is no community to build there because it's also disperse and most of it is fake. Like I cannot sit here and make one good case for why a regular person should join Twitter, Blue Sky, Threads or Mastedon. >> Well, as a poster, as a person who like makes things, a person who views things, right? Like those are the most people are lurkers, right? They're they're just consuming. >> There are better things to view on every other platform >> or Yeah. Or you can just open Instagram res >> read a book. I don't know. But the I think the distinction that is getting lost in this conversation going back to X is it's a bunch of reporters. >> People who are describing this are reporters. >> Yes. >> And I understand why Casey's like, I didn't do the source building on threads that I was able to on Twitter back in the day. >> That isn't that is a universal experience that most reporters I know are having. >> Yeah. >> Because the sources are there. >> Yeah. >> So you you just got to go to the party. You just have to be in the room. I I think that all of >> Mike Isaac talked a lot about that, by the way. Mike Isaac, a reporter with the New York Times, talked a lot about basically building his profile as a reporter by being a reply guy in people's DMs. >> Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Every every reporter in that period did that. We all did it. >> Um my Twitter DMs back in the day were the place to be. Uh that's different now. Um the reason I'm making Instagram videos is because everyone sees them, right? Like that's just a dynamic that is true. I can talk to my phone camera for two minutes and put it on Instagram and I get a bunch of incoming because even if they're not on Blue Sky, they're definitely on Instagram. Fine. But I don't think that a bunch of reporters saying I have to go engage my sources over here is the same kind of endorsement as this platform has regained its vitality. And I I think that's actually the error they're all making. If you are in tech and you want to talk about AI with other people who are building and using AI, they're all there. That's where you got you got to go look at it. You you should reporters should look at primary sources. I I believe that with all my heart. >> I don't think that means you have to say that like it has regained its cultural power in sports because it has not. >> No, it definitely hasn't. >> Right. And like there's something there that it's this is Casey's argument. It's powerful in its one vertical because it has gotten smaller. >> Sure. But all that other stuff didn't go anywhere, did it? Like I I do think it's possible that threads ends up going down as the biggest fumble in this whole space because it Oh, absolutely. >> It just could have done it. And there was a really funny thing this week. Uh Connor Hayes, who is like leads product at at Threads, uh posted, uh we recently made a change that could increase the posts you see from those who follow. Like threads had to make a change to its algorithm so that when you follow somebody you will see the things that they post. >> Like what are we doing? How like everybody got so lost in the sauce of wanting to do this like contentbased recommendation system from Tik Tok that they forgot how people want to talk to each other on the internet. And I think I I do think it's possible that threads may have missed its chance here, but it boy did it really actually have a chance to be the thing. And and >> I I in every other vertical except tech and AI, there's still a chance. >> Do you think >> Meta has a lot of money? They could just get all the sports writers to use threads. >> That's po. It's You might be right. But I also wonder like culturally it's it's now been three years. Maybe we've >> maybe we've moved on. Maybe we don't need that thing anymore. I don't know. I look I let me let me zoom way out. I'm sure people will be mad at me if we're even suggesting that anyone can get any value from X. Fine. Like I I I can't stop a network effect and I I personally do not believe that things go away if you ignore them, right? And the network effect of the tech executives and the people building these things is onx. So if you are like I'm not going to pay attention to you, the network effect will still be there and they'll still have it. That's just that's just reality. But the mainstream audience is watching video platforms. That is the thing they are doing. And they're watching the video platforms. Like every now and again I I get a video and it's just screenshots of X. >> Mhm. >> And it's like I'm that's how I'm consum I'm still not at X. I'm just consuming some tweets. That is very powerful. And it's right next to the idea that instead of having a phone, you'll have a little AI Asian Tamagotchi. Sure. >> And I actually think the little video, the scrolly video platform is the center of gravity that will prevent X from ever fully recapturing its magic and prevent the little AI Tamagotchi from ever supplanting the phone. >> It's a good theory. >> And like that's that to me is the real like sure we can all go look at we can all go see Greg Joyak and John Turnis posting their home view videos on X because that's they all want to seem cool in front of Elon. whatever it is. But the views for that actually happen on Tik Tok and Instagram. >> Yeah, there's a really interesting argument in that that suggest that scrolly vertical video is a more important format than the smartphone, but that's I'm not ready to get into that yet. Um, I do just want >> YouTube in that conversation is a good question. >> Yeah, fair. Um, I do just want to pick on John Gruber for just one quick second. Sure. Um, because he writes in this piece and I should be clear, I think John Gruber is right about most things. I think he's so so very wrong about this one thing. He writes, "The culture on X today is remarkably friendly and inclusive. It is a cheerful place." That cheerfulness is another differentiator. Is that your experience of X at all? >> Again, in the context of like here's a cool new AI product that can do cool new things. I think any excitement to be found is on X. >> Sure, that's fair. It is AI people cheerleading other AI people. But that is something >> AI, right? in that there's something there, especially if you work in and around software, you care a lot about software, as John does, that is exciting and fun. There is there is more tech conversation that is exciting and fun in those platforms than the other Twitter-like networks. >> Yeah, that's fair. Uh he also >> my experience of X is nothing like an exclusive inclusive experience. >> Yeah, I agree. >> And I it is like really important to say that out loud. >> Yeah. Yeah. John Gruber and I are both white dudes. Um which is a really nice thing to be on Twitter. Um, he also says without any fanfare, uh, X has demusked its algorithm. And I would say I'm willing to bet that John Gruber muted Elon Musk and forgot about it and now thinks that is the case because that is not my experience of X at all. Um, do you think people should feel bad going back to X? Like genuinely, like do you would if you what is preventing you from going back and and engaging in that in a more real way? >> You know these people. I yeah I mean again I look at it several times a day because I I it is my job is our job on this show to go look at primary sources and then talk about them. >> That the fundamental job of being a reporter is not to report on someone else's reporting but to go try to find some primary sources. And when we do report on other people's reporting, it's almost always people we trust who we know to have done that job, >> right? Like that's the dynamic. I think that literally the service we provide here is one jokes, two, we like each other and people enjoy that. And three, we curate information. Well, like those are I think that's in order what we do on this podcast. Um, and that third thing is really important. So I want to make sure I go look at the primary sources and see the primary sources. I don't think anyone else has that responsibility, but like actually contributing to that platform like makes me feel bad and other people can feel differently. I that go ahead do what you got to do. Um but there's not some part where I'm like, "Oh, I I need to look away from this." It's like, "No, my my job is to look at primary source information, so I'm I'm going to go seek it out." >> Great. >> I buy that. Um, but I I again, where am where where am I putting my social media effort into making videos and I I'm confident that is a faster way to reach more people that I've never encountered before than the X algorithm. >> It also puts your hair situation much more front and center in the conversation. >> Why do you think it's getting crazier with everyone? I just imagine you like having a a hairdresser on the side and you like get your camera up and you're like more and they make it higher and you're like more and they just that's that's your Instagram strategy. It's good stuff. Um all right, we should take one more break and then we're going to come back. It's time for the lightning round. Be right back. >> Support for the show comes from IRA by Palo Alto Networks. Every new cloud workload or AI agent your team sends out is another identity that gets permanent access to your systems. And in 2026, those non-human identities with access outnumber actual human identities 109 to one. You need a tool built to manage them all, human, machine, and AI. That's exactly what I by Palo Alto Networks was designed to do. It's one identity platform for all and it outshines legacy tools that were only built to manage human employees. How does it work? Well, IDRA replaces permanent permissions with dynamic access. So you can lock down every identity without slowing down your own business. With IDRA, you get unified control by replacing siloed AM or identity and access management, PAM, modern privilege access management, and governance tools all with a single control plane. 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It is I'm not even going to ask. I just I this one I know this one. Brendan broke containment in my world this week. Uh it's time once again for America's favorite podcast within a podcast. Brendan Carr is a dummy. random car. >> Oo, some dad rock. >> Oh yeah. >> He's so stupid. >> Little like Chicagoy vibes that time. I like it. >> It's good. Give me more five-part harmony singing Brendon Carr's name. That's all I'm looking for. >> That was some yacht rock. >> Uh that comes from Bruce Hartley, uh who said that soft rock has been woefully represent unrepresented on this podcast. >> Bruce Hartley, uh little known fact, uh played rhythm guitar for Kenny Robins. You know, that name sounds like he did. >> You really had me in the first half, not going to lie. Uh all right, Neil, what did Brendan do this week? >> Uh I'm curious. What broke contain for you? I've got two, but I'm What What What did he think of? >> It's got to be the live stream execution, right? >> That's one of them. We got We have some video of this. Um, >> so let's talk about that very quickly. So, Pete Hagsth announced the Pentagon would live stream an execution. Uh, which apparently he didn't tell anyone he was going to announce, including President Trump, who mostly seemed surprised by this information. >> Bold strategy, Pete. Uh so we ran around and asked all the major social networks if they would carry such an execution because that is against all of their terms of service including uh X which is long-standing policy and you know X is like very narrow and a lot of wild things happen in X but but all of them have a policy against live streaming murder >> just or that kind of violent content in general. >> Yeah. And so most of the platforms said no. Some of them didn't respond because they didn't want to raise the eye of the president. And then the president was like, "That's weird. We're going to look at it." And then they all were like, "We're not gonna >> Yeah, >> that's what happened. So Brendan, in the midst of all this, man loves a speech controversy goes on CNBC and CNBC says, "Are you going to allow a live stream execution? What do you think about this?" We have the clip, but you can just run it. Well, I think look, it it my understanding is it's not on broadcast TV, so I don't think there's a role for the FCC one way or the other there, but I trust Secretary Heg. I mean, he's implementing the laws and the regulations that are, you know, relevant to the Department of War, and I think he's doing a great job, and I trust that he's making the right call on these issues. >> Is it something that you would allow on broadcast if they wanted to? >> Look, I mean, ultimately, we're going to defer to Secretary Hegath and, you know, his decisions on how to move forward with this. >> I'm sorry. Did he just say I'm going to defer to Secretary Pete Hexth on whether this is allowed on broadcast? >> First of all, shout out to Carl Kinia uh buddy uh for asking like the most obvious question. >> Yeah, you got to love when people ask the question. Like >> it's just like what are you great, >> right? Like you care a lot about content. You're always ranting and raving about the public interest. The networks don't care. The president's speech is live and you're like the network executives have to go to jail now. Should we live stream an execution? He's like, "I don't know. I defer to the military." Weird. And then the idea that Brendan is like, "I don't have this power because it's not broadcast television. I I can't weigh out on it." Totally belied by the fact that he wants to have the power. >> Yeah. I mean, my my I'm not like my I have no power here t-shirt is raising a lot of questions. Answer my I have no power here. Like I'm on television saying I don't have any power here, but totally everybody should do it. Yeah, like my boy, you wrote the Project 2025 chapter on speech regulations and how you would use your broadcast power to control content moderation on platforms. >> I know you wrote it because your name's on it and I read it. You want to have the power, but you're like, "Yeah, this one's a hot potato. I don't know if it's in the public interest to broadcast an execution." I defer to TEGA. >> That's also, by the way, that's the thing Brendan Carr says when President Trump has not yet declared he's in favor. Oh, he's a weasel. I mean, what we're describing here is cowardice. >> Correct. >> Right. Like he should be able to say, "Well, that seems bad." But he can't because he doesn't know what Trump is going to do. So, >> he defers to Pete Hathth. >> To Pete Haggath there in, you know, in another world, if Trump was like, "We're doing this." He'd be like, "I'm calling up the heads of every broadcast network and saying they have to run it." >> Yeah. He'd be like, "Jimmy, I'm going to force Jimmy Kimmel to host the execution. >> Jimmy Kimmel will execute this." Exactly. >> Um cowardice, right? Like doesn't even have the principles. Anyway, Trump called it off. We're not we're not executing someone live for like a million reasons. I think Trump was actually convinced by members of his own administration this is a horrible idea for 10 million reasons. Yeah. >> Including the number of people who would want to copycat it. Including the number of people who would think that this is a sufficient deterrent. There's a lot of reasons we're one of the few countries in the world that still does executions. It doesn't actually destroy crime. That's a different story. Okay, that's one. That's the one that broke containment. Can I talk about the other one? The the other one that's on my list that I'm much much I think is much funnier. >> Sure. >> Okay. SpaceX announced what is it early this week, late last week that they're going to be a major wireless carrier. >> Right. They've been sort of threatening to do this for a while and >> and this is partially Brendan. >> Okay. >> But it's partially just a winding road of Vergecast stuff. Yeah. >> And incompetent FCC commissioners >> from like every party is incompetent here. This is a bipartisan Brendan Carr is a dummy. Like Brendan Carr, you are all Brendan Carr people. So in Trump one >> are are we are all Brendan Carr t-shirt is not going to do. >> Everyone at the FCC is going to be issued a I am Brendan Carr shirt, right? Uh someone AI that Charlie Kirk song. Like let's go for it. All right. Um in Trump one, you will recall that T-Mobile wanted to buy Sprint. >> Mhm. >> And everyone thought it was a bad idea. But we did endless vers about it. How reducing competition in the wireless market from four carriers to three would raise prices and lower service and not be a good outcome. And so the Trump administration, you will recall, engineered a solution in which T-Mobile would be allowed to buy Sprint and some of Sprint's assets and Spectrum would be given to Dish Network to stand up a new network called Project Genifis. and this would create fear in the hearts of our network executives and they would once again compete for your dollars. I will remind you that this did not happen. In in no way, shape or form did project 5 meaningfully exist to the point that when we covered the fact that it didn't exist, we got on there emails from Dish Network communications people that just said, "Our network does exist." >> Yeah. No, we did it. I have it. Look at it. So, we sent people, it was in Vegas, there was eventually it did exist in like in the sense that one mid-range Motorola Android phone could sometimes get it, but it mostly rolled over to AT&T's network cuz >> they built something. >> It had a it had back stop deals with with AT&T and T-Mobile, >> whatever. >> Yeah, >> lot of history there if you're a Verass fan. Project Genifi Sis, the network that was going to do it. Anyway, this failed. Dish Network declared bankruptcy and then they did the thing that everyone thought they were going to do uh which is just hoard spectrum for several years until the value went up and then auction off for money. That is indeed what they did. There's one block of spectrum that they could not get rid of. It was the 800 megahertz Nextell spectrum. >> Okay, >> because Sprint once bought NextTel and it had the IDEN network which was the like push to talk while you talk. >> So the Iden spectrum has been sitting around for ages. No one wants it. Again, in all of this project genis noise, this just ends up sitting around and hasn't been able to sell forever. So, they flipped it to a private equity company called Grain Management. And guess who bought it? SpaceX, >> of course, for presumably nothing. >> It's like $8 billion. They bought some other Spectrum over the years. Of course, Brendan is just like waving requirements and auction rules to to Yeah. Right. He's he's just making it happen for SpaceX. And the thing that's funny about this is SpaceX is making all this noise about standing up a major wireless carrier and the stocks of our existing carriers are dropping and they are freaking out because what does Elon Musk represent for them? Actual competition, right? The idea that people will like Starlink more than their existing service is just reality for them. Nobody likes a wireless carrier. This is why you need competition in the market. whether or not Elon can actually build a cell network using all of this spectrum that can compete nationally with T-Mobile and AT&T and Verizon without roaming agreements for those companies which have basically said they're not going to allow them to roam because they don't want real competition. Like they're afraid. >> Oh yeah. >> And whether any of that will be cost-effective in the end is like irrelevant to the fact that Brendan got to do some waiverss and finally get some spectrum sold to his buddy Elon Musk. So we'll see. I'm very curious. I I think they have some interesting plans around using small dishes connected to Starlink and using Starlink as the back haul for this new network, >> but they've got to get phones to support their new spectrum. >> Big question. They they say most phones already do, but big question about battery life, performance, coverage, all this stuff. They obviously have to launch 15,000 new satellites, Gen 2 Starlink satellites to support this new network. And they got to build some terrestrial network. This is a lot of network to build. >> Yeah. while the carriers are like actually afraid for the first time in their lives. That is all because in Trump one, everyone allowed T-Mobile to buy Sprint and destroy competition for ages. >> This is all Project Gen 5 CIS's fault sometime. >> This we are at Starlink Mobile. If it comes into fruition, will is the true Project Gen 5? >> Yeah. So, okay. There have been rumors for a while now that SpaceX is going to build a phone. Does this make you think it's more or less likely that SpaceX is building a phone? >> What What kind of rebranded mid-range Android phone preloaded with X? >> They're gonna They're gonna take a Trump phone that no one sold. They're going to buy all of the unused inventory of Trump phone, >> paint it gray, and call it the SpaceX phone. It's going to be so sick. >> Well, see, again, the wireless market needs more competition. And even the the presence of a real competitor has these companies shaking in their boots. >> Yeah. and Starlink >> the notion of a competitor is is a real thing, >> especially one with the resources and brand and history of SpaceX, right? Like this is not some upstart trying to lay fiber. This is a company with real resources to go do kind of whatever it decides to do. But then there's also rumors that SpaceX and Tesla are going to merge in some meaningful like this company is going to get way more nuts before it ever figures out how to sell you a smartphone would be my guess. Yeah, we did an entire decoder on this with uh Walter Pisc from Lich Adventures. He's deep in it. Uh that's coming out soon. But I just want to call this out. This is >> we've done a lot of monkeying in the mobile market with Spectrum over these past 10 years. >> And a lot of it is we're still feeling the aftershocks of allowing T-Mobile to buy Sprint, which has potentially created this opportunity. >> But we have never really focused on are these markets competitive? And may maybe this will happen, but I suspect everyone is going to learn that building a network is much more expensive than it seems. Enough to have killed Dish Network as it turns out. >> Yeah. Although I'm not sure that took that much, but but here we are. >> Project Genifis. >> Yeah. All right. Take us out of Brendan. >> All right. Brendan, if you would like to explain any of your special allocation decisions or you're rank cowardice, uh you're available to join our show. Uh we are not regulated by you here on the internet, so I've been told. Um, so I think we would have a free flowing and respectful debate. Don't you, Brendan? >> What could possibly go wrong? >> Anyway, that's been Brennan Car's Dummy, America's favorite podcast. My podcast is a dummy. >> I feel like that cleanses me of Brendan every time. It's like I'm I'm just immersed in Brendan and then and then I'm >> We got to make a Spotify playlist of these. >> I agree. Um, all right. My first lightning round item is about smartphone sales. Um, one of the things we've been talking about a bunch on this show is what the rising price and lowering availability of RAM is doing to the smartphone market. In particular, what it's doing to cheap phones. Um, the answer is it's bad for everybody. So, Counterpoint, which is a research firm, put out a uh report this week that said the global smartphone market declined 20% year-over-year in Q3 of 2026, which is its lowest Q3 level in 14 years. 14 years. >> Wow. >> This is how low smartphones are. Um, a couple of interesting things happened. Um, so e everybody is down. I should just say that. But relatively speaking, Samsung and Apple took an even larger share of the smartphone market. Um, up from, let's see, 37% to about 45%. So, that's a that's a big jump in two companies owning the smartphone market. Um, everybody's prices went up. Uh, one thing that Counterpoint found is that there has been robust early demand for the ZFold 8, which is really interesting. This like this passport-sized foldable thing seems to be the thing. Uh, it's working for Samsung. It appears it's going to work for the iPhone Duo that it's just interesting that that is actually now starting to to turn. Um, everybody's prices are up. Everybody's focusing on smaller things, but basically the ongoing thing here is just that cheap phones are completely disappearing. >> Y everybody is is getting for there's a line that says they're prioritizing margins by shifting supply from thinner margin segments to higher return markets and models, which means they are ditching cheap phones and pushing towards more expensive phones. And they're raising the prices on those more expensive phones because they can, because people who pay a lot for their phone will pay a little more for their phone. Uh and I think this this market is just getting bleaker and bleeer and there are a bunch of explanations for it, right? One is the rising costs. One is that I think you can make a good argument that there have not been a lot of interesting phones in the last several years and so people are holding on to their phones longer. There are fewer compelling reasons to upgrade. It'll be interesting to see if the foldable thing can flip that. Like the smartphone market had so much relentless growth for so long and that relentless growth and enormous scale changed every other tech industry in its wake. Like my laptop, the Google book exists because of the smartphone supply chain. Like it it and in every way. Um and and that is just quarter by quarter being unwound kind of right in front of our eyes. >> Yeah. Everything is an Android phone. >> Yeah. And and now Android phones are more expensive. It's like that's the it it is it is gonna come for everybody. >> I look everyone wants there to be the next thing the next wave of growth. I think this sign of maturity in the smartphone market is actually very healthy right like is it has not been necessary to upgrade your phone every year every two years for quite some time. >> Agreed. >> And on sure sales are down. I I think the refurbished market is actually really healthy. >> Mh. >> Right. Like there's something here where like it's not necessary to get the newest thing and we're probably going to see a lot of demand for refurbished, remanufactured, all those devices. All of that attention should go elsewhere. It has all been locked up in the in app stores and app taxes. A lot of innovation has been held back >> because the economics of putting an app on a phone have just held back innovation. And we've covered every variant of this for years and years in this show. If something else happens, I think that's good. >> I've actually been hearing, this is mostly just anecdotal at this point, but I've heard it a few times now, that there are people doing hardware startups who not very long ago couldn't even get their emails answered because these companies were just busy making giant scale smartphones for everybody. And if you weren't in the smartphone business, they would have to like redo their tooling and and factory systems. And it just wasn't worth it. They were all just focused on making phones. that now there is interest and energy and availability to build other stuff that there is suddenly like manufacturing capacity in this world that there was not not very long ago and and it's made some people optimistic that like we're this stuff is expensive. It's hard to get especially if you need a lot of RAM but we we can build things in a way that if you weren't building a smartphone it was very hard to build things not that long ago. >> Yeah. The danger is that it's easier to build things that are essentially like underpowered Android phones. >> Yeah. >> And then we'll be surrounded by a lot of underpowered Android phones. >> Feels like that's coming. You got to put all those crappy processors somewhere. >> That's all I'm saying is like everything's an Android phone. Really cuts both ways, huh? >> Indeed. Uh what's your next lightning round item? >> Uh agent warfare is here. What I've been calling the Door Dash problem has arrived at scale. Uh JP Morgan Chase Jamie Diamond announced that he doesn't want agents running on his platform. Bank of America announced that we've heard it from Amazon isn't letting Grockbot on. So Elon is tweeting that he's going to build an Amazon competitor which is just great. >> Is that true? I missed that. >> That happened today and it got like covered and it's like I don't think Elon's going to build an Amazon competitor. I gotta be honest with you. >> Oh god. >> I think he likes tweaking Jeff Bezos but I I don't think he's going to build a logistics network. >> I really hope he builds it. I hope he calls it Graasonazon and it will just it will just make my life a little bit worse. >> If you thought the romance authors of America were mad at Amazon, just you wait until Groazon shows up. Uh this it's here, right? The idea that Agentic Commerce is going to upend the the world in some way is here. And I think one of the most fascinating lines of debate here is whether or not your computer is you. M >> and you know on the internet everyone's like well it's my computer it's my agent I just want to use your website I can use it any way I want and that's not true like just because it happens on the computer doesn't mean it's not happening right like people are allowed to like you can't go to the bank and be like I'm going to come in here fully naked and just like smash a rubber chicken on the counter three times that means you have to give me money right they can be like no actually we we prefer you interact with our our staff in a certain private business. Yeah. >> Yeah. Right. You can't be like, "Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put together a remote controlled car. I'm going to drive it around your bank as as many times I want until everyone leaves and I'm going to rob you." Like, >> it's like not a thing, you know? Like, I'm going to stand outside the bank with a party speaker until you come out and kiss me. Like, not a choice. Yet online, it's like any way I want to use your website is a free-for-all, >> right? And I think agents are going to bring that into the sharpest focus it's ever been. That actually the people on the other side of the internet connection have a say and they're going to start to find ways to enforce that say. And I know our listeners are going to say, "Well, it's a cat mask game. We're going to do this forever." But like that's why you have courts and fines and that's why all these companies are going to end up with deals and they're going to have a lot of incentive to both block and respect the blocks of other competitors because there will be economic terms in the middle and court cases on the side. And so I see all this blocking happening and I I guarantee you like what Bank of America said was we want to make sure that it's safe and we are involved in how this works and they're going to just write an API for how the agents are going to use the thing instead of just like clicking around in the website because that was always brittle to begin with >> and like giving Muse your Bank of America credentials is always a stupid idea. Well, Ann, I mean, it's I actually I think it's really good and interesting that this is starting with banking and in particular like consumer banking because it is such a perfect version of the problem. That's like if Muse goes and drains my bank account either on purpose or by accident, who am I going to yell at? And ultimately, who is responsible? >> So Elon announced today that if Crockot buys something without permission, he'll refund you. >> Yeah, Elon Elon Musk lies a lot. Um, that's fair enough. >> It's fine. I look forward to him. what the the Tesla Roadster is coming out a decade later. I look forward to getting my money back in 10 years. Uh but Bank of America, it it's the it's the sort of thing that like this makes me think of carriage disputes with uh cable companies, right? Where if I don't have ESPN on my TV, my instinct is not to get mad at ESPN. It's to get mad at Comcast for not showing me the stuff that I want to watch. And this is all of the leverage that those companies have over the over the carriers and the distributors. And if I'm Bank of America, I'm I'm like, "Okay, these things are going to make mistakes. They're going to take the money and there people are going to come to us wanting their money back and they just don't want that smoke, right?" And so what they're going to build is a system with controls that says things like you cannot drain their bank account without authorization. like there. So, putting this kind of guardrail on it, this is such an obviously straightforwardly good one to do that I think it's good to start with this and then work towards the one that are more complicated. Like, should Muse be able to buy things for me on Amazon that I explicitly direct it to buy on Amazon? Interesting question. Should Muse be able to proactively without my knowledge spend the money in my bank account? No. Like, >> should Muse deliver you an engagement prompt to gamble a little bit more on Kelshi? >> Right. No. I think no >> that one that is the grayest area of all >> reasonable right and and so I think we are going to reckon with each one of those individually okay but here's my thing about the the door dash problem don't we need to rename the door dash problem because door dash appears to have just wholeheartedly embraced the door dash problem >> like door dash they announced I think like a while ago they announced like a like a CLI integration for some agents >> okay >> you know there all these companies any company that moves physical products around the world is like try like >> fair yeah >> you know like it's so hard to build that thing that they're like, "Yeah, you can your agent can come and use Door Dash and we'll just charge you more money because you don't get to see like Door Dash has a huge advertising business. Instacart has a huge advertising business." Um, so they're very much like, "We'll just charge you we'll just charge you the money we would have lost if you didn't look at our ads." >> Right. >> Yeah. True. >> That's that's basically where they're at. But Door Dash is doing the other thing, which is they're trying to build their own agent, >> right? >> Right. like all their AI stuff is like in the Door Dash app for consumers and it's like I don't I don't I don't think what people want is >> the Dash Buddy or whatever it's called. Like I think they want to use whatever agent they want to use. >> Wait, can I give you a really stupid example of this that I've been thinking about a lot? So there's this place there's this pizza place near us called Jets. Uh and and Jets is like it's a normal pizza place. It's like a mini chain. There's a bunch of them. Uh, so you can you can order online, you can call, you can do whatever, but they give you a 15% discount if you text. I don't I don't know why, but you get 15% off your pizza if you text your order. So, of course, I go to text my order. Um, but remembering how to text my order is impossible because I'm not looking at a menu. I'm looking at the messages app and I have to remember which type of pizza it is that I want. The sizes that we get like all it just made me realize the beauty of a UI that is a menu that you click on that's like I want this thing and this thing when I have to say out loud with no help and no visual cues what kind of pizza I want. Remembering that what I like is an eight corner pizza is impossible for me. And and this is just like this is the thing that keeps coming up to me every time I do this is like in theory I'd like the idea of just being able to text like hey get me my usual at Starbucks and it orders my Starbucks for me. Like that is a flow I'm interested in. In reality having the picture there that shows the thing that I usually order and having the name of it and having the confirmation of what it is ends up being the whole experience. >> Yep. >> And and it's just like actually UI is good here in this case. I mean, how how many times are you ordering with your family and everyone needs to go look at the laptop together, right? >> Yeah. Oh my god. >> This just it's a thing. Like, there's a reason that I'm not so worried about phones being displaced by AI. Looking at stuff remains a powerful tool in the human experience. >> Yep. >> Then like we're going to make the screen smaller has not historically been a winning move. >> No. What? Can I interest you in a screen that's on your kitchen counter and only CarPlay's your apps? >> That's CarPlay apps. Does that is that something you'd be interested in? >> It's like John Turnis announced the the phone would be the new intelligent hub and I I didn't realize how far he was going to take it. >> Do you know what I mean? >> That is sort of true. Apple has been saying like the phone is the thing the world revolves around and I think they meant that much more literally than we realized. >> Yeah. And Yeah. Truly. It's like well that's where the apps are so we'll just do CarPlay >> the future. >> Okay. I have one more for you. um which is mostly just a question which is how do we feel about super intelligence? So, President Trump makes this announcement that it is no longer artificial intelligence, it is super intelligence. And I don't know how to put this like other than this like a bunch of cowardly babies. A lot of people in Silicon Valley followed along. They're renaming SpaceX AI, which is a stupid name for a company, to SpaceX SI, which is a stupider name for a company. Uh Salesforce is out here doing SI stuff. Everybody is just throwing in line with super intelligence. On the one hand, I don't care about this artificial intelligence, as I've I've we've been talking about this on the podcast for years. The idea of AI, artificial intelligence as this like catch-all term for all the stuff we're talking about is actually wrong and problematic and causes lots of problems and has made it very hard to talk about a lot of this stuff. So, like AI as a term I don't think is any good. I mostly just think it's such like weak baby nonsense that my guy posts on Truth Social. It's super intelligence now and everybody in Silicon Valley goes, "Yes, >> wait, he did write an executive order with all the power and force of an executive order." >> Yeah, sure. Which I would point out have just about as much legal standing as a post on Truth Social. >> Well, if you ask Trump, he can reenter the Constitution with an executive order. Um, here's here here let me try to give you the framework for it. Okay. What you're mad about is the naked and rampant corruption in the tech industry and this is the best example of it. It's it's so in your face. >> What is the point of being rich and powerful if you're going to do things like this? Do you know what I mean? Like it's they don't call it you money for no reason. Like if I had that much money I would be such a pain in everybody's ass all the time. And also I would live on a giant boat and no one would ever hear from me again. >> What is the point of any of this if you're going to like play >> purchased the government? >> It just it came at this additional cost of a little bit of their dignity. >> Yeah, that's that's real, >> right? Like like there will be no AI regulations, but you have to call it super intelligence. And they all looked at each other and said, "This is going to suck a little bit." >> Oh god, I hate that. That's what it is. That is what happened. >> That's what happened. >> That sucks so much. Okay, keep going. >> I'll just say like the thing you're the thing you're offended about is corruption. >> Yes. >> And this is just a naked stupid example of corruption. >> It's right next to Kimberly Gilfoil got run out of her fake job as ambassador to Greece because she asked for $100,000. If she'd asked for like $100 million, I think it would have been like good job. >> Yeah. Oh, yeah. >> And like I it's like the embarrassing corruption is like truly embarrassing. By the way, it's it's it's Susie now, but that was from Dressico, which is Eddie Isard. Just shout out to my Eddieard fans out there. Uh, but that is what you're mad about. You're mad about how how small and shitty it is. >> Yes. And it is so small and so shitty. >> I also think it's a bad term. Like that's the other problem is like we didn't we didn't even improve anything. It's just we're just saying super now. Like >> Yeah. Cuz it doesn't scare people. And it's like I think it scares people more. Yeah, AI is at least like a term we've had. Like people have been talking about artificial intelligence for a hundred years. At least it's a thing people understand. Super intelligence is just literally nothing, >> which just drives me crazy. But anyway, >> well, they all want it to be super I everyone should go read the Kevin Ree book, which is just dead ahead reporting. >> It's very good. >> Like just beginning, middle, end. Here's what all these people said and what they were thinking about. And it is just very clear that they've been trying to build AGI from the start. >> Mhm. and they they've had to hide it in like enterprise sales agreements. Very funny. >> Yeah, agreed. Um, all right. You got one more. What's your last one? >> My last one is just like I just want to say this out loud. There's something very big happening with decompiling software, particularly in video games. >> Mhm. >> Where you can take a finished binary and decompile it with AI and then like port it to whatever platform you want. Xbox is going to embrace this in some way. Just go for it. But Xbox needs any idea they can. So like that's fine. Uh, by the way, I again remind everyone Asha Sharma, the C of Xbox is from Rene, Wisconsin, and I continue to have an open invitation to interview her at my high school. A thing that I've not formally asked Asha or my high school about, but if you can make this happen, we'll make it happen. >> I'm confident everyone involved could make this happen. >> I just think that'd be really fun. >> That would be really fun. >> Uh, so Xboxes it. There's a lot of copyright law involved in game de compilation. You know, the various VCs on X are like all software is over now. Right. I saw something going around that was basically like everything is going to become open source whether you like it or not. And I was like first of all I don't think you have at all reckoned with the implications of that. And second of all, don't we have like big broad legal paradigms to prevent that from happening? >> Again, maybe maybe this is our new catchphrase. Just because it happens on a computer doesn't mean it didn't happen. Do you know what I mean? Like it it occurred and you can do things about things that occur. So for example, open source as a concept in the world exists on the framework of copyright law. >> Yeah. >> Like those licenses have effect because you have some property rights in the software you've written and then you can write a license saying if you want to modify this you have to use the same license and if you don't I'm going to sue you for copyright infringement for contract violation. Like all that comes from the basis of copyright law. So if you're like everything is open source now. Well you boy have you really made copyright law very powerful. This is just like the dynamic you're in and like yes it might mean you can like look at the code and you can make your own Photoshop but Adobe will have something to say >> right and the copyright law is in the constitution as a way to create value for people who make things. And I don't think you can run into the courts and be like, "Well, I I was able to do it, so >> I could see it, so I did it. >> Screw you, George Washington." Like, it's just not gonna happen that way. And so, like, I I'm thinking about this a lot because you can really see the tech industry, particularly NX, which is a particular kind of bubble, is just getting away from the reality of things having cause and effect, particularly if it happens on a computer. >> Like, I can do this on a computer, so none of your old frameworks apply to me. It's like, oh, that's that's all going to catch up to you real fast. >> Yes. >> Or >> game decompilation is like the one where I just have not had enough time to formulate all of my thoughts. >> But boy is I'm very curious for how people want us to talk about it, how they're thinking about it. But it's the it's it is absolutely the one where you know we did five years of Google versus Oracle. >> Yeah. And all of that was about whether copy or Google reusing the names of APIs in Java was infringement. And that's like five years and a billion dollars. >> Yeah. And this is just like I downloaded and remade Call of Duty. Like >> what was it? Structure, sequence, and something like I mean like in incredibly arcane acronyms. >> Yeah. >> About the the organization of API names. >> Yeah. I do think there is something really fascinating happening here. People are building all kinds of cool stuff. They're modding games. They're making games available for other platforms that they haven't been available on. >> It is slightly surprising to me that Xbox is in on this because I have to imagine the gaming industry is going to throw every bit of its weight against this trend. >> I mean, Microsoft owns all those studios. >> That's a fair point. >> They're fine. >> They're like, "No, Activision Blizzard, you love this." >> Yeah. Like, what are you going to do? Like, they need to get they need to get those games on on more platforms. Yeah. >> Right. Like they they have some amount of and if if they do it on their terms, they might be in control. >> Fair. And I think there is something potentially very cool there that you're going to start to see people like if every game becomes moddable in this way, there is some very cool stuff to be had there. Um, it gets messy in a lot of ways in the ways that you've been describing and others, but the idea of giving like bringing the sort of vibe coding energy to video games at this kind of scale is pretty cool. There's a lot of cool stuff that will happen as that happens. >> Yeah. And, you know, I'm not saying I'm a particular expert on the dynamics of the game industry, but I'm pretty good at copyright and software. Um, this one is going to be a mess. >> Yeah. This is there we are we are looking at decades of lawsuits about whether decompiling any piece of software so you can recompile it any way you want is acceptable or allowed or copyright infringement like a good question. So if I ship you an app, >> Mhm. >> right, the ones and zeros, the binary of that app that I ship you, that's copyright protected, right? You can copyright that. This is my app. Here's the thing. The code I wrote to make that app protected by copyright. You can file that. That's it took a decade of lawsuits to get there, but you can do that. If you decompile my binary and you end up with slightly different code, important question right there. It's probably a derivative work like there there you can get there, but those all of copyright law is like on first impression and so like I don't know the answer to that because no court has ruled on >> right. I think I probably know the answer to it but you have to have that lawsuit. >> Yeah. Well, personally I'm just thrilled to finally have a reason for you to rant about copyright on the Vergecast again. So this is great news. It's It's been It's been like >> It's funny. Am I trying to unearth the Java lawsuit for my brain? It's like my own body is trying to protect me. >> It's like what if you just fainted instead? >> All right. Well, before we do, let's get out of here. Uh Nei, who is on decoder coming up? Uh, so we had Ben Jordan today talking about Flock and then we have uh Walter Pek talking about uh Starlink and then uh Governor JB Pritzker from Illinois is on Decoder very soon. I asked him if the Bears are going to stay in Chicago. >> I was like, >> you got to use your platform for for the things you can. >> I was just if you it's the opening episode. I was like I you know I got to do a good job here. I have so much family in Illinois. He's like you can be you're we claim you as part of Illinois. I was like no no no sir. I'm from Wisconsin. Absolutely not. It was It was not what he was expecting to be. >> Did you wear your cheese head to the interview? >> I should have revealed my Jordan Love jersey. Uh uh and then there's one coming up that's a big deal. Very excited about it. That's going I'm just going to tease it. It's it's it'll be a big one. >> It's exciting stuff. Uh we have overhead projectors on Version History this weekend. One of the wonkier episodes we've ever done, but it's really fun. Um, and we have we had an overhead projector just blaring at me in the studio the whole time. So, you'll get to watch me get progressively hotter from sitting next to an overhead projector for two hours. It's good stuff. Um, remember you can subscribe to The Verge to get all of our podcasts, all the ones we've been talking about adree, including this one. You get all of our newsletters. You get everything we're doing. Verge.com/subscribe. It's the best way to support all of this. And speaking of support, thank you to everybody who voted for us in the Signal Awards. Um, by the time you're hearing this, the voting is over. I don't know if we won. We'll keep you posted. I hope we won, but mostly I just care about all of you voting for us. And thank you to everybody who did. And if you want to get in touch about all this or anything else, you can always email us vergecastverge.com. Call the hotline 866 Verge11. The Vergecast is Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Josh Kahas, Kavir Chopra, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kefir, and Chavis Larchuk. We will see you next week.